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H-1B Visas Proving Lucrative For Engineers, Dev Leads
Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes Ever wanted to know how much H-1B holders make per year? Developer Swizec Teller, who is about to apply for an H-1B visa, took data from the U.S. Department of Labor and visualized it in a series of graphs that break down H-1B salaries on a state-by-state basis. Teller found that the average engineer with an H-1B makes $87,000 a year, a good deal higher than developers ($74,000) and programmers ($61,000) with the same visa. ("Don't call yourself a programmer," he half-joked on Twitter.) Architects, consultants, managers, administrators, and leads with H-1Bs can likewise expect six-figure annual salaries, depending on the state and company. Teller's site is well worth checking out for the interactive graphs, which he built with React and D3.js. The debate over H-1Bs is an emotional one for many tech pros, and research into the visa's true impact on the U.S. labor market wasn't helped by the U.S. Department of Labor's recent decision to destroy H-1B records after five years. "These are the only publicly available records for researchers to analyze on the demand by employers for H-1B visas with detail information on work locations," Neil Ruiz, who researches visa issues for The Brookings Institution, told Computerworld after the new policy was announced in late 2014.
My CS professor said you can only get a CS job these days with one of them, but I can't find any information on what I have to do to get certified.
I wouldn't even go that far. In all of the locations I looked at where I have some knowledge of the going rates, that data actually showed that the H1-Bs are on the low end of the scale.
This data doesn't appear to be anything to brag about really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
He started on a TN visa, recruited from an engineering school in Mexico. After a year he was transitioned to an H1-B visa, where he still is.
You know, there may be unemployed citizens or green card holders with engineering degrees, but anyone as good as this employee would already be employed. He's imaginative, driven, and skilled. I wish the process to get him (and his wife, who was allowed to move here but isn't allowed to work) a green card wasn't so arduous.
The H1-B debate seems to be about "hiring Americans who need jobs over foreigners". I don't want to work with someone hired to fill a quota, whether that quota is "unemployable American who managed to get an engineering degree" or otherwise. There are plenty of engineering jobs out there for the competent, with room to spare for those who need visas.
And the difference between engineer and developer is.. what?
Engineers are often held personally liable for their mistakes. Tim S.
No, The real issue (I believe) is that they can't find engineers willing to work for less than other engineers (2/3rd the pay and no benefits).
I've seen when they do a postings for H1B jobs, Its tailored specifically to that person for THAT job, then its posted for just long enough to meet the legal requirement to "prove" they tried to find a qualified US engineer but nope, They didn't find any so the H1B person is kept
UPS Sucks
Everyone seems to imagine those holding H1-B visas to be from poor countries who are ready to work 12 hours a day as a slave to avoid being shipped "back to the slums."
As a Canadian, I've been offered over the years 2 separate jobs in the US with the offer to do it through a H1-B visa. Many of my ex-co-workers took up this offer at one point and have since moved to the US. I have no idea if they'll ever move back.
The salary offered through both of my offers were very competitive, and I only turned them down because I disagree with a lot of the way the US is run and prefer Canada, and the extra amount offered wasn't enough to make me want to leave.
You do know that for a H1-B there is no posting requirement right? That's for PERM position. A person who has usually been working in the country for a few years usually with the same company. But the DOL requires that the position be advertised as a position with zero experience gained on that JOB, i.e. an entry level job.
So, let's say a company has a H1b employee whom they like. Has been working with them for 2 years. They want to retain him. DOL requires that the position be advertised with the minimum experience required. Once advertised, do you think the company wants to hire someone without the 2 years of experience and without the proven utility?
I understand it's great to go after the H1-B scape goat but, do check why the law is so screwed up for immigrants, before you are vitriolic about the H1b's and the PERMS. You are targeting the wrong category of immigrants with all the vitriol.
It's easy to curb the H1B 'problem' it was part of the immigration reform. Companies which are h1-b dependent were supposed to pay Huge costs. Never went through congress. It was very sensible reform! It would have taken out the sweat shops from India and elsewhere and preserved the intent of the H1-B visas.
Don't compare salaries for one job against salaries for another job. $87k for an (electrical/computer) engineer is exceptionally low, generally 5 years xp max. I have seen H1B justifier req's out there where they offer that salary to 10-15 year people who make almost twice that, and obviously turn it down.
This is pure FUD, of the "those people make more than me, so fuck them" variety. But H1B continues to be a huge problem and deterrent for people in the country to be in the field, and has the salary lowering effect we expect it would have.
Nobody can agree on how to measure quality "software engineering". Outside of machine performance, code is really about communicating with other developers more so than communicating with machines. Machines can run anything explicitly defined, whether it's C++, machine code, or Brainfuck; but human grokking is much more sensitive to syntax, organization, etc., and varies per mind. This is the realm of psychology and other "soft" sciences that are difficult or expensive to do practical research in.
Table-ized A.I.
Here, let me back up your point with last week's news from the LA Times:
Me and my friends all have either H1-B or TN visas, we all have six figure incomes. The H1-B workers who have a low salary have it because they don't have the motivation to improve or the skills to stand out, the same as people who are not using a work visa.
I've switched jobs 3 times, and it really is no problem with the visa, in my case I just fill out a 'change of employer' form and that is it, I don't even need to leave the country.
I think it's even worse than that. The survey likely doesn't show what the individuals who got their H1-B's through Tata and Infosys actually get paid, instead showing what the tech corp paid agencies like Infosys or Tata instead for a given individual. Contractors are contractors, after all - the rate paid to the contracting agency for a guy is way more than the guy himself will ever see. A corp can pay a rate of $50/hr to the agency (be it US or foreign), but the guy in the seat is lucky to see $30/hr of that, before taxes. Tata and Infosys devour the majority of H1-B visas, so it stands to reason that maybe they should be more specific on who they're surveying.
TL;DR: I may be wrong, but I suspect that the survey is bullshit, and that the reality is that the individual more often than not gets paid slave wages, while the tech company can still happily report paying "industry standard", since they pay that "average" rate to the agency.
I could be wrong, but given greed...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
He's not too far off; I remember in the bad old days when I worked for a large poultry corporation; most of the illegals (nearly all from South of the US) that they hired on did exactly that - shipped as much money home to the family as possible, stayed 5-10 years, then went back home and used that cash pile to start a business back home as their career/nest-egg generator.
Not sure how many H1-B's do the same thing, but I'm willing to wager that it's not an inconsequential percentage.
(...and to be honest, if I were not American, I'd do the same damned thing.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And the difference between engineer and developer is.. what?
Engineers are often held personally liable for their mistakes. Tim S.
Only one state (Texas) regulates "Software Engineers". Software Engineering is perhaps the only Engineering field that that statement doesn't apply to except, perhaps, in Texas (but even then I doubt it). Typically "Software Engineer" is synonymous with "Software Developer".
On the other hand, a "Computer Engineer" is regulated in all states since it is a sub-field of Eletrical Engineering.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
One of the reasons for the high salaries is the multiple reasons H-1B workers are used. The first is what most American IT and development workers are familiar with -- lowest bidder body shops that rotate in cheap labor for large companies who just want the cheapest possible price. In my experience, these are the guys brought in to do DBA work, SW development, etc. at barely market rate or below. In my experience this is where all the stories of crap code, incorrect system design, etc. come from.
The second is those workers/companies who are using the visa more or less as it was intended...short term importing of very talented people with actual non-commodity skills a company needs. These are people brought in to work on new product design, etc. that is more highly paid. So, you have two peaks in the salary curve, one for the low end chair-filler type of worker and one for the specialized worker.
Everyone's situation is different. I work for a medium size multinational company, and it's almost normal for (good, talented) people to rotate around countries using whatever visa status is appropriate to work on projects. Since the cost of relocating someone and applying for their visas is so high, this is mainly for people who actually have something to contribute beyond commodity stuff. By the same token, they do a lot of offshore stuff too, but they prefer to keep it at arms length (i.e. use a body shop like Infosys or Tata.)
I think the intended use of the H-1B is fine, but the race to the bottom use isn't. Companies should have a higher bar to prove they actually need to import a worker beyond complaining "we can't find any domestic talent." They're out there, you just have to pay for them.
One can throw all the money in the world towards an H1-b, but citizens have something more valuable - freedom to move between employers. Guest worker programs only serve to square the circle of having a legal, captive, non-citizen labor supply in a First World country.
Kill off the guest worker programs and then see how much businesses have to cater to citizens - as they cannot offshore everything.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The fact that corporations have been able to abuse the system so egregiously is, itself, a condemnation of the program. A proper program would have checks to prevent abuse like we see.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I looked at my state and H1Bs have below-average salaries, somewhere around 10-25% below average, depending upon the exact position. Clearly, the purpose of H1Bs is to drive down the wages of people already here; otherwise, H1Bs would be getting paid about the same as everyone else, within let's say 5-10%.
I also looked at the numbers, and by far the H1Bs are going to California. Only 2,000 made their way to my state. Companies in California want you to live there, paying $3,000 or more per month in rent plus high taxes and everything else but aren't willing to pay you enough to be able to afford it. Since they've run out of people to con into moving to California, they've turned to H1Bs.
I have nothing against the best and brightest coming to the United States. We have tons and tons of international students studying engineering in our universities, and these people are more than welcome to stay here and become citizens, joining our labor pool.
I worked as a contractor at Target for a few years. A staggering number of Indian dudes followed this exact pattern:
1. Come here on H1-B through a consulting firm on the preferred vendor list.
2. Consulting co puts these single guys together in apartments.
3. They work for a year, sending the money home.
4. They heard from their families that their arranged marriages were set up.
5. They went home for the wedding and came back to the US with their bride.
6. They got pregnant and, before the baby was born, they headed back to India, with 2 years of American work experience under their belt to get managerial roles in the offshoring operations.
It was like a freaking revolving door.
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